Templar Battleforce for iOS and Android Review (with Beginner Guide)

Sometimes, there are those games that’s just, let’s call it not pleasantly beautiful in their graphics display. Even the trailer couldn’t give you that charm of first love experience. Nevertheless, despite being short in attractiveness, once you’re laying hand on these games, you won’t be able to turn back. This kind of games, are the reasons why I love doing this thing, to find hidden gems, games that are often underestimated by others, but actually, have a fantastic game-play.

This kind of situation kind a reminiscent of the latest product from Trese Brothers. Despite being weak at some areas, this little gem will really blow your mind with heap of contents, stories and conspiracies, aliens, space marines, and of course, brilliant game-play. This is Templar Battleforce.

Templar Battleforce – The Premise

Templar Battleforce is a turn-based game with space and aliens as the main story. Templar Battleforce takes you to lead the squad of Templar Knights, consisting of Leviatan mechs, a huge battle mech pilot by normal humans.

Taking story right after the huge battles that force humans to find a new place for their home, one of the ship somehow lost contact with the main fleet. Just when they decided to orbit into a planet, alien fleets called as xeno attacked their ships.

From just a simple ‘defend the attack’, this templar knights start to investigate the reason behind this attack and this ‘xeno’ aliens. Templar Battleforce reveals a lot of mysteries behind this so-called Exodus.

With all these knights, you will have to lead them to victory against hordes of aliens, pirates, and the ancient Narvidian threat. There are total 45 missions available for you. At the end of all the missions, you and your team will know, the culprit behind all these troubles.

To uncover all the mysterious secrets, you will be accompanied by the Templar Knights. There are total 8 classes that can be chosen from, each class with their own uniqueness, attributes, skills, abilities, and their own equipment. There are hundred of requisitions, ready to make your experience of Templar Battleforce, different from others, even if they’re playing the same game.

With these classes you can build your own team, consisting of templars that have worked together in your previous missions, or you can create your unlocked templars. From these templars that you’ve handpicked, you can decide how these templars will decide their focus on. For instance, you can make a Scout that specialize in scouting area, or you can make the Scout as a Sniper with long range shot, and many other possibilities.

Again, with these combinations here and there, Templar Battleforce will give a personal experience, made differently from others. And this just one of the cool things offered by this game.

Templar Battleforce – The Gameplay

The game-play, is where Templar Battleforce shines the most. Even so, the game-play itself isn’t something that can be categorized as original, fresh from the oven. In fact, at a glance, Templar Battleforce really looks like most Warhammer 40,000 games.

But anyway, sometimes you’ve got to borrow the best mechanic possible, make it your own, and add more spices to it, so that even more incredible product could be produced right? This is exactly what Trese Brothers has done in Templar Battleforce.

Templar Battleforce is an RPG turn-based strategy game, combined with army building system. And with the system borrowed from the Warhammer games, it gives Templar Battleforce a feeling of great strategy game.

Inside every level in Templar Battleforce, lies an interesting mix of standard turn-based strategy and resource management. You’ll start the level with a certain amount of templars, decided by the game. You will move your templars one at a time, like every turn-based game does. Likewise, your templars will have to use their various skills and try to do as much as possible until their action point run out.

There are really various skills, designed specifically for each classes. Some can do heavy melee damage, others can overwatch moves, there is also a class that specialize in medical battle.

Beside attacking the xenos and make sure your Captain doesn’t die, you still have to grow your squad during the level. To do this, you can capture the Tactical Points with Engineering class. By capturing this TP, you’ll earn resources (SP) that can be used to build more templars and strengthen your current squad.

There are various missions in every levels. Sometimes, you’ve got to defend the Tactical Points. In another level, you will just use the TP only as a recruiting point. There’s also some level when you have to be very decisive as when to stick around with the squad, or splitting into several groups. This all caused by the level design that most of the time requires your squad to be explorative, either to finish the main objective or find some other secondary missions.

Because of this exploration thingy, you will never have enough muscle to outnumber the xenos. What actually happen in the game is, your squad will always being outnumbered by the xenos. This will result a rather chaotic situation for you and your squad. The strategy and decision are left in your hand according to the current mission and situation.

Each level comes with turn-limitation. Whenever your squad runs out of turns, one by one, templar in your squad will die. So you have to be very efficient in every turn that you take, no AP or MP wasted.

When you’re done with the mission, all the survivor templars will be rewarded with EXP, meanwhile, you will get some Requisition Points that can be used to unlock equipments, abilities, even unlocking new templars for your squad. On the other hand, the EXP earned by the templars, would be used to level up. Once they’ve leveled up, templars can upgrade their attributes, skills, talents, and also able to use more advanced equipments.

You can also change the appearance of your templars, the avatar look, and even the color of the mecha. So you know, this is not only just a strategy game, not just a turn-based game, not just a resource management game, it also an RPG game.

Templar Battleforce – Things I Like

With these many contents put together, Templar Battleforce isn’t your usual mobile game. It’s designed specifically for hardcore gamers that love strategy games. Each level play time can also a bit lengthy sometimes. This isn’t something that I personally think suitable for many casual gamers out there.

However, again, for hardcore gamers, Templar Battleforce is like a shiny little green gem. With 45 levels (up from 30 levels when this game firstly announced on Steam), I don’t feel like I’ve wasted any penny with this game.

Moreover, with the gameplay that has been carefully designed, each level could be sometimes really frustrating if I don’t choose a wiser options. Everything counts and if once I miss my calculations, my game could be ruined. Thankfully, Trese Brothers developed this game really well, so even if I’m playing this game in a slower device like iPad Mini, I can quit the game and return like in no time. Something that’s really rarely seen with all the new games.

I also didn’t find any lag whatsoever while playing Templar Battleforce, it is blazing fast. Even when I do some multitasking with other apps and the game quits because of the lack memory, I can back to the current game state really fast. Applaud to the developers for this.

I also really love the uniqueness of the 8 classes (7 minus the Captain) for templars. Each classes seamlessly matched with other classes, creating a unique game style and combination. For example, soldier and hydra would be perfect defense because of Hydra’s ability to burn the floor dealing damage during enemy’s turns combined with soldier’s overwatch will wipe the enemies during their turn. Engineer’s ability to capture Tactical Points combined with soldier’s movement speed buff also will help the squad clearing capturing TP faster.

With these combinations, you will have your own unique squad, tuned up according to your preferred play style. As a result, without you even realized, you already have formed bond with your squad. And if you think the squad is out of balance, you can always respec your templars and create another focus for the templars.

My last point is the detail that’s taken into care by Trese Brothers. I stated above that this game is most suitable for hardcore gamers because of the content’s amount. However, Templar Battleforce also welcomes any casual gamers that want to try themselves. It has every explanations for everything inside the game. Detail tutorial for any first comer. So you won’t be confused what you’re doing inside the game. They also put difficulty level so that casual gamers would be able to enjoy the game.

Templar Battleforce – Beginner’s Guide

This guide is compiled with the purpose to give brief explanation for those of you that probably still miss out a few explanations inside the game. Trese Brothers also puts some combat guide explanations as how the game works, how to count the damage and the logic behind every battles. Probably will be more suitable for most hardcore gamers that usually count every single thing.

So here are my compilations that I hope would be able to leverage the way you play Templar Battleforce.

Special Skills for each Class

You can choose whatever talent you think is good for your templars. However, for some classes, there are talents that’s essential to be taken.

Captain. This class is exception, there is no essential skill needed to be taken from a captain. However, make sure to focus on taking melee or range talents. Do not take both.

Soldier. For soldier, Overwatch and Rallying Charge are essential. Take this Rallying Charge until +2 MP, +14 DMG. After that you can choose other talents.

Engineer. For engineer, Capture, Sentry Turret, and Heat Sink are essential. Highly trained Capture will enables you taking the TP faster. On the other hand, Sentry Turret will help you defend with its Overwatch ability. With Heat Sink, you can burn out heat from another Templar.

Scout. Scout will be the one that lighten the path, Sensorkit Scan is a must have.

Hydra. Hydra is best to burn the land, so Napalm talent should be taken.

Neptune. Neptune is using talent with a lot of heat, so make sure you pick Full-Vent once. Just once, because it’s a self only buff, you can’t use it for other templars.

Paladin. Paladin is the best medkit templar in this game so make sure you pick Battlefield Medic and Battlefield Enhancers. The later one won’t only heal, it also buff damage.

Berserk. This one also doesn’t have any essential talent to pick.

Level Up Wisely

The way you’re levelling up also need to be done properly. Weapon damage will be based on attributes while talents will require skills. Talents are divided into several categories. Crippling Melee/Range Attack, Melee/Range Attack, Self-only Buff, and Group Buff.

If you’re going to go with Melee Attack, you will have to increase your Warrior skills. Usually, a melee templar goes with the shield. So you will have to increase Strength, Focus, and Quickness for your attributes. Strength will increase the damage as well as Critical hits from melee attack, while Quickness will increase Counter-Attack % (point stands for percentage). Focus will help increase Auto-Block %, equipments will only have maximum 59% of Auto-Block %. Focus will increase this percentage.

For Ranged Attack, you will have to increase Gunnery skills. For the attributes, it would be best if you raise Quickness (if you’re using light-ranged weapon) or Strength (if you’re using heavy-ranged weapon) and Focus to increase Critical Hits % (especially for Scout with Sniper weapon and Headshot talent).

If you prefer using Grenades. You will have to increase Grenades skills and Focus. This will both increase the damage dealt by the grenades. Lastly, if you want to buff as many templars as you can with Group Buff, increase your Tactics skills. The higher this skill is, the more you can buff your templars with.

Spending Requisition Point

You can’t just spend your RP aimlessly. Everytime you’re spending your point it have to be aligned with the way you want your templars to be. Because, unlike talent, skill, and attribute, RP couldn’t be respec.

Heat

When you can’t use some of your talents, it means that your templar is burnt with heat. On Normal and Easy, a Leviathan will burn off 8 heat per turn (less with more difficult level). However, if your templars is moving with more than 6 MP per round, the armor will burn heat 3x normal. If a templar’s heat surpasses their max heat, they will begin to suffer damage every turn. That’s why Engineer’s talent to burn off heat is really essential.

Watch the Move and Check if all MP have been used

In each and every turn, you have to make sure that all the MP are being used. Either to find a good cover or to group with other templars. However, don’t be too hasty when moving. The double tap to move might be a good feature, but if a templar if obstruct the route, your templar will be automatically redirected to another route. Make sure to not double-tapping too fast. If such thing happen, my suggestion is to quit and reload this turn.

Look for Cover and Offensive Tiles

Always try aiming tiles with green shield or red crosshair. When you do this, you will have more advantage. For red crosshair, you will have more accuracy when attack. The green shield will give you more defense when you’re attacked.

Defending Tactical Points

Unlike capturing that requires your engineer to stay exactly beside the TP, defending will need you to establish a 2-square defensive perimeter (1 square further than capturing a TP). Because, if an enemy passes into this area, their presence will cause damage to the TP.

Swap on Deployment

You might swap your templars before they make a move. If you make any move to the templar that you want to swap, that chance will be gone. Also, you will have to pay to SP cost for the difference between two templars.

Ordnance

Ordnance are special supply items that can be purchased with SP from Tactical Points. These items can be used for resupplying a Templar’s max uses for Buffs, scanning a foggy targeted area, or even healing Templars.

EXP from Deployment

You might see that your other inactive Templars are still getting some experience. That’s because all other templars need to stay at a solid base level so you will be able to use them when needed. Of course the main squad will have more EXP, but for others, they will have some EXP minus a penalty according to the difficulty that you choose.

Strategy to Capture Tactical Point

I have this strategy to capture any TP really fast. This strategy requires two Engineers and one Soldier. The soldier will have to maxed out his “Rallying Charge” skills and have minimum 3 Tactics. Gather these two engineers beside the soldier and buff them with rallying charge, then right away aim for the TP. Make sure that the TP is visible though, otherwise it would be a waste of turn.

Double Tap to Load Game

This is pretty noob, but you can actually double tap your game to load it directly.

Conclusion

Templar Battleforce is a game with tons of content. I couldn’t more than happy to recommend this game, especially to the hardcore gamers. This game is a must have and a must play. For casual gamers, I would still recommend this game, and if you encounter any difficulties, you can always ask me to help you solve the problems.

Note: Templar Battleforce is provided by Trese Brothers for me for my most honest review. Thank you Trese Brothers!